Ah, I was thinking of Core 2, but was off by a couple of years. Although "peak" consumer Intel was undeniably in the 90s.

Like I said, Intel may not be market leader in some segments, but they certainly have very competitive products. The fact they've managed to penetrate the dGPU duopoly, while also making huge strides with their iGPUs, is remarkable on its own. They're not leaders on desktops and servers, but still have respectable offerings there.

None of this points to a company that's struggling, but to a healthy market where the consumer benefits. News of two rivals collaborating like this is not positive for consumers.

The 90s were easy mode for semiconductor manufacturers because of Moore's law, and because cranking the clocks was relatively easy. After 2000 was when the really advanced microarchitectures started coming out.

>a company that's struggling, but to a healthy market where the consumer benefits

I would argue that the market is only marginally healthier than, say, 2018. Intel is absolutely struggling. The 13th and 14th generation were marred by degradation issues and the 15th generation is just "eh", with no real reason to pick it over Zen. The tables have simply flipped compared to seven years ago; AMD at least is not forcing consumers to change motherboards every two years.

And Intel doesn't even seem to care too much that they're losing relevance. One thing they could do is enable ECC on consumer chips like AMD did for the entire Ryzen lineup, but instead they prefer to keep their shitty market segmentation. Granted, I don't think it would move too many units, but it would at least be a sign of good will to enthusiasts.